Part IV: Deployment
It was a calm evening, cool, on the downslope to winter. I was taking out the kitchen scraps to the bin behind the mess hall. I paused to light up a lho-stick and looked up at the sky. It was dusk, with the sun shrinking in the east and the stars above beginning to show themselves. As I took a drag, I noticed a thin red line spiderwebbing out from a single point among the constellations. It rapidly grew, both in length and width, shining from within with its own light in shades of deep crimson and sickly fuscia.
A deep foreboding grew within me, and the lho-stick dropped from my mouth when a long, sickening shriek tore from the officers’ quarters. The sound made my skin crawl; it was terror and death and madness all wrapped up into a single note. I found out later that the camp astropath had raked her nails over her head and face so violently that most of her skull was visible by the time the officers found her. My own head ached in that moment, and I stumbled back against the wall, watching the skies.
The wound in the heavens grew at an exponential rate, and thin tendrils of red snaked down to the planet’s surface like vipers released from a cage. One such tendril, hundreds of kilometers wide, fell upon the nearby hive. I don’t know whether the screams I heard came from the city, from the creatures of the warp, or from both. I didn’t stay to find out. Rushing into the crew barracks, I yelled for everyone to make ready. I didn’t know where we would go or how we would escape this, but I knew that whatever was coming would find us as ready as we could be.
The next time I stepped outside, the sky had been consumed by blood. The land around me was lit up an eery red, except for the sky above the nearby hive, which glowed with the yellows and oranges of pillaging fire. I gathered my people up, making sure no one had been left behind. A glance down the road that led to the hive confirmed my fear. A moving, writhing wave of blood-red bodies was steadily advancing on the camp. Daemons. I could just barely make out horns, spikes, lashes, and blades among the rippling mass. It was death and fire and blood incarnate. We would never survive this.
I rushed the civilian workers towards the landing pad, hoping against hope that one of the company’s dropships was still there. I doubted it. The Primaris were each worth a hundred thousand Rusovian ditchdiggers; it made sense to save these elites and leave this planet to slow the oncoming horde. As we rounded the corner of the main barracks building, I found that I was mistaken.
A silent line of Space Marines stood, their masked helmets surveying the scene impassively. We stopped in our tracks, thinking that perhaps the angels of death would kill us to prevent our leaving. But as we approached, the mob of slathering daemons washing over the edge of the camp behind us, a silent order made the Marines suddenly and sharply spread ranks. When the last worker had passed through the gaps in the line, the ceramite giants once more stood shoulder to shoulder, forming an impenetrable wall. I looked back in time to see them raise their bolt rifles to their shoulders, and then a cacophony of gunfire and daemons’ screams nearly deafened me.
Behind the Marines, Lord Commissar Lievanov stood like a harbinger of death, his black coat whipping in the unnatural wind.
“Women and children to the dropship!” he yelled above the din. “You men, follow me!”
One of the laborers cried out in terror, shrieking, “We’re just civilians, for Emperor’s sake!!”
Lievanov looked grim, shaking his head. “There are no civilians today, you fool.”
He led us to the armory, where among the bolt weapons and plasma incinerators, there hung short las carbines. I gripped the weapon in my hand, loading the power pack with trembling fingers. I looked up and saw that the Commissar was standing in front of me.
“These men are your crew, are they not?” he said quietly.
I nodded, breathing heavily.
“Then they will follow you. They’ll do what you command. I need you to use that fact if we’re going to survive this.”
My eyes went wide. I’d never fired a weapon before in my life. I’d never seen combat, never killed anyone (or anything). How could I possibly - ?
“You can do this… Captain.” And he walked away.
I lead the men out of the armory and we rushed across the parade ground to where the Marines still stood in an unwavering line. I saw a few ceramite forms on the ground, and through these gaps I could see a field of gore, the bodies of daemons littering the ground before the Primaris. Bolter casings rang off of ceramite and daemon carapaces as the Marines continued to pour fire into the endless ranks of monsters.
Our ragtag group took up position on the flank of the Marines, forming a line more or less shoulder to shoulder with the giants. We were pitiful in comparison to these gods of battle, but for some reason, just the act of standing against the enemy with the Primaris made my heart swell with courage and pride. I could see it on the faces of my men as well, a calm in the face of the death that I’d never seen before.
Commissar Lievanov bellowed for us to make our weapons ready. As the daemonic horde surged and began to lunge forward again, we aimed and let off a blistering volley of las fire at the enemy. A few daemons toppled, but the beams of concentrated light scattered in the hands of the untrained workers.
“Aim for the center of mass! Deep breaths! FIRE!”
I’m not sure how many volleys we fired, but the next thing I knew, the lasgun was clicking in my hand and Lievanov was yelling to “FALL BACK!” I turned to do so and noticed a rank of forge workers lined up behind us. We slipped through their lines and began reloading our weapons as they began to fire.
“Second rank! FALL BACK!” he yelled again.
I saw what he was doing. The Marines were performing similar maneuvers, albeit silently and much more smoothly than our makeshift company. We were falling back to form a perimeter around the transport craft. I took up the order, and my men began to work in smooth procession, unloading their weapons into the enemy with precision. The daemons pushed hard against our ranks, and I saw some of my men eviscerated by unholy weapons. I chanced a glance back at the dropship and saw Marines and workers quickly boarding the loading ramp as the perimeter shrank. That was the first moment I thought that we might actually survive.
Then the swarm shrieked as one and surged forward. The man on my left was impaled. The man on my right had a chunk of flesh torn from his neck by razor-sharp fangs. The hope that had flared in my chest just a moment before was quickly snuffed out. Death had come for me.
Then, lightning struck.
From the heavens, bulky Inceptor Marines fell with a thunderous crash, scattering howling daemons in every direction. The undersides of their armor and their finned grav chutes glowed cherry with the heat of reentry, but they didn’t seem to notice as their assault bolters began to unload on the surrounding horde. The snub-nosed heavy bolter pistols that they wielded in each hand reaped a terrible toll, and daemons screamed in pain, anger, and exultation at the carnage.
I fired my lasgun until it scorched my hands, reloading when my cartridge was spent, doing my best to clear daemons from around the courageous Inceptors. I felt a firm hand on my shoulder and turned to see the Commissar, nodding towards the transport. I realized I was alone; all of the daemons had gravitated towards the skyborne Marines. I rushed back to the boarding ramp as it began to rise, and I saw the Inceptors being ripped apart by the foul monsters.
My last look at Rusov was a planet covered in death, fire, and blood. Hell. I never saw my home again.
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